Create Harmony

A Journey to Winter Harmony and Health

• Sally • Season 1 • Episode 113

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Our podcast shares practical tips to combat winter illnesses, emphasizing hydration, nutrition, and natural remedies for self-care. By addressing sickness at home with essential oils, vitamin-rich foods, and comforting recipes, we aim to encourage resilience and promote wellness during the colder months.

• Exploring hydration and sleep for illness recovery 
• Remedies for sore throats and cold symptoms 
• The timeless benefits of chicken soup 
• Preventive strategies when others are sick 
• The role of vitamin C and essential oils 
• Using natural cleaning products for germ control 
• Innovative methods like Nasya oil for nasal relief 

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast, where we talk about setting an intentional rhythm. We like to savor all the blessings that God has put around us, so this is a place where we will take a few minutes to remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us and to celebrate everyday joys. So during winter, at Create Harmony, we shift our focus onto things that are snuggly and cozy, and we talk about ways to brighten up the shorter, darker days and stay attuned to things that help us reset and restore ourselves. At the start of the new year, our podcast is filled with a whole lot of winter self-care, as well as ways to declutter and clear your mind. So this is episode 113, and I am your host, sally Burlington.

Speaker 1:

We are still focused on winter well-being. Last week, we talked about how to hygge up your life. I shared a lot of ideas that we use to find hygge around our house, and this week we're going to explore all sorts of ideas about what to do if you have a sick person in your house, or how to weather the storm of sickness that happens during the winter, this time of year where we tend to get sick more easily. There are colds, there are flus and all sorts of other unpleasant stuff in our atmosphere. So when you have exposure in your home, you need ideas to curb the spread or when you first start to feel bad. So before we talk about how to keep from getting sick, we're going to talk about what to do if you begin to feel bad. At the first sign of a sniffle. You want to make sure that you are properly hydrated and then you're getting good sleep. This is how to make yourself get well much more quickly. So it might be a good time for maybe some herbal tea, some clear broth. This is going to keep your throat moist, it's going to prevent dehydration, which is hard for your body, and it's going to dehydration, which is hard for your body, and it's going to. Maybe the warm tea or broth is maybe will loosen some congestion and thin your mucus, and you're going to come alongside your body's immune system here and just help it out a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Here's another idea you might try some steam inhalation If you feel like you can't breathe through your nose or getting a little congested. Try this process. Basically, what you do is get a bowl of water, pour boiling water into the bowl and then you want to place a towel over your head like form a little tent over your head if you will lean over the bowl. This steam is going to help relieve your nasal congestion and it also will kind of soothe any irritated respiratory passages, like if your nasal passages and sinuses are irritated. This is going to be very, very soothing. Another thing you might do is add a few drops of something like eucalyptus oil or peppermint oil. That'll really open you up and kind of enhance the steam.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you feel a sore throat coming on, you want to use a mixture of honey and lemon. Those two things together can really be soothing to a sore throat. You can do that by adding it to tea or water. So basically, what you want to do is like mix about a tablespoon of honey and maybe the juice of half of a lemon. You would add that to a cup of warm water or tea and just sip on that, and you may want to do that several times a day. This can be very, very soothing as well as healing.

Speaker 1:

So another thing to do for a sore throat is to gargle with salt water. This doesn't just make your throat feel better, it's also going to reduce inflammation and kill bacteria that might be in your throat. So what you do here is you mix about half a teaspoon of salt into a glass of warm water and then you take a sip of salt into a glass of warm water and then you take a sip of it and like, lean your head back and gargle it around, you know, get it back there in the back of your throat maybe 30 seconds or so and then spit it out, and you can do that several times a day. It really does sort of help soothe what might be going on in the back of your throat. You might want to try some ginger. That's another good additive. It's very anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. So you can do this by adding fresh ginger slices to water boiling water and that makes like a ginger tea. Or you can even chew on a little small piece of ginger. You can add ginger to like a soup or a recipe something you want to make and get that ginger inside your body.

Speaker 1:

Now listen, we really stand by chicken soup at our house. My children are tired of hearing it, because anytime they get the slightest bit under the weather, or even hear about someone who's under the weather, I say, oh, eat some chicken soup. You better eat some chicken soup. This is a classic remedy for colds and flu and it might be a good thing to keep on hand. If you could keep some chicken soup handy so that you can provide yourself with fluids. It helps reduce congestion and inflammation, it's very soothing to your throat and it just feels cozy and warm. It just feels cozy and warm. So if you, if you have anyone in your house who's sick or been exposed, just use all of those ideas, so hopefully those ideas will help for curbing whatever is happening if you are already getting sick.

Speaker 1:

So now we're going to talk about if you are still well but someone else in your household or in your office or whatever around you is sick. So you're going to want vitamin C here. Vitamin C is your friend. You want to consume fruits like oranges, lemons, grapefruits. There are also things like bell peppers, spinach, broccoli. All those things have a lot of vitamin C. Also, kiwi has a lot of vitamin C. You can eat those things or just take a vitamin C supplement.

Speaker 1:

You can also use essential oils. There are a lot of essential oils that have antiviral and antibacterial properties. So some examples of that are peppermint we already talked about that Thyme, lemon, oregano, rosemary oil. All of those things help you keep a clean environment, so you could like diffuse those in your diffuser to cleanse the air, or another thing you might do is use a make your own kitchen cleaner or all purpose cleaner for your house. This will smell good as well as killing germs, and it'll be natural.

Speaker 1:

So here's what you're going to want to do with that. You're going to want to get a clear jar. You can do this if you're using like a citrus oil. You can use citrus peels, or you can use rosemary like the actual herb, put it down in the bottom of the jar. But if you don't have those, you can just add a few drops of whatever your preferred essential oil is and you're set to go. So then you fill the rest of the container with distilled white vinegar and if you're using like the citrus peels and the herbs, you're going to want to let that sit for about 12 to 24 hours and sort of marinate in that the essence of those things Then you can use this to clean any surface in your house.

Speaker 1:

You can also mix some of your cleaning vinegar. This is going to be like a really concentrated cleaning vinegar, but you can mix it with water and add it to a little spray bottle and that could be used as hand sanitizer. You can carry it with you anywhere you go, take it to work, take it in your bag in your car, whatever, and it's just a natural way to keep the germs at bay. Another thing that you might want to remember during this season is just to clean things that you use all the time, like your cell phone, the remote to your TV, any frequently used item. Just wipe it down. You can use your cleaning vinegar to wipe it down. It might be a good idea to switch out your toothbrush heads. That's the thing I always forget to do, but just things that you use frequently could use a clean. I have this cup that I use at my sink, that when I take my medicines or vitamins. Each day, I use this cup to drink the water and I try to remember to clean it out every so often, because that just keeps germs down. Your car might be a good place to wipe down. You could freshen up those areas and whether you've been sick or not, it just feels good to freshen up all of those areas.

Speaker 1:

Now, another remedy that I'll tell you about is the last thing I'll tell you is this is nose oil and we really believe in it at our house. It comes from the Ayurveda world and it's called Nasa oil. I'm going to spell it for you in case my Southern accent does not translate well for you, but it's N-A-Y-S-A, so the actual instructions you can buy it online, but the actual instructions with this oil is that you like lean your head back and like drip it into your nasal passages. We're not quite that hardcore. We don't do that at our house. So what we do is that we just put a little on our finger and just like put it inside our nostrils. That might be too much information, but we just put it in our nose, to the outer part of our nose. But listen, it works. It really works. I've even recommended this to my college age daughters and they've been a lot more well since they started using it. So there you go.

Speaker 1:

That's a list of natural ways to recover and ways to keep germs at bay. A lot of this stuff are things that you already know, but it's nice to get a reminder to do them and help. Hopefully that will help you feel better, both mentally and physically. So now, going along with the theme of winter well-being, we're going to use a poem to close our time together today, and this poem is just calming and grounding. I found it very calming and grounding. It might lift your spirits on this winter day.

Speaker 1:

It comes from a book that we've used before, called Spirit Wheel. That is written by Stephen Charleston, and it is called Once and Always and it goes like this you are embraced by a love so deep. No force among the far-flung stars can separate you from it Not illness, not sorrow, not even death. You cannot fall, you cannot be lost. You are once and always held in arms that do more than shelter you. They are the embrace of life itself. The warmth of a sun so pure its light dazzles the imagination, the imagination with a clarity of grace beyond the reach of any shadow. Nothing can harm you. You are safe. The power of the Spirit surrounds you, the love of the Spirit protects you. The peace of the Spirit is within you and will abide there forever.

Speaker 1:

So for today, I hope you gained some new ideas on how to endure this winter and avoid illness. Glad you took the time to listen in and we would love to have you come back next week Before you go. If you've been enjoying this podcast, it would be great if you could just take a few extra seconds to leave a review. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, it helps more people find us right here at Create Harmony and we really appreciate it. So if you could take a couple of seconds out to do that, it would be great, and we hope you'll be back next week. Until next time, peace, thank you.

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Sally Burlington

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